Analysis | Game of Thrones binge-watching helps Tencent beat estimates with US$2.7b third-quarter net profit
The internet giant’s video unit has 43 million paying subscribers, which it claims is the largest in China’s red-hot online video streaming market
It is easy to forget that just a few years ago, millions of mainland Chinese consumers likely got their first taste of Hollywood from buying pirated VCDs and DVDs off roadside pushcarts, as well as from illegal online video streaming websites.
The speed at which these consumers have migrated online, then paying for the right to binge-watch US hit television series like HBO’s Game of Thrones, has helped create a handful of giant players in China’s red-hot online video streaming market.
The biggest of that group is Tencent Video, a unit of Hong Kong-listed internet giant Tencent Holdings, that now boasts 43 million fee-paying subscribers as of September 30. Last November, it had more than 20 million paying customers.
While video streaming giant Netflix had 109.2 million subscribers worldwide at the end of September, Tencent’s video streaming business still has plenty of room to grow in a country with a population of about 1.4 billion and 751 million internet users as of June 30.
Headquartered in the southern Chinese city of Shenzhen, Tencent reported on Wednesday a 69 per cent jump in net profit to 18 billion yuan (US$2.7 billion) in the quarter to September, up from 10.6 billion yuan in the same period last year.
